Twitter deletes Dr M's post after flagging it as 'glorifying violence'

KUALA LUMPUR: Twitter has removed one of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s tweets which it initially marked as “glorifying violence".

The tweet has been replaced with the message: “This tweet violated the Twitter Rules."

Earlier, Dr Mahathir has said that Muslims have a "right to punish" the French for its past "massacres", as violence continues to rear its ugly head in France, adding however that Muslims have not taken vengeance in this way..

He posted on Twitter on Thursday (Oct 29), just a few hours after a knife attack outside Nice, France, saw three people killed and others injured.

“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large, the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings, ” he wrote in his blog, chedet, with similar text also shared on his Twitter account, chedetofficial.

“Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years, ” he added in his writing that is directed at French president Emmanuel Macron.

In the post, Dr Mahathir also described Macron as "not civilised" and “primitive” for seeming to blame Islam and its believers after a teacher was beheaded earlier this month in Paris after he used cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad in class as teaching material during a civics lesson.

“It is not in keeping with the teachings of Islam. But irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill. The French in the course of their history have killed millions of people. Many were Muslims, ” said Dr Mahathir, where he also claimed that the West is trying to impose its values on others by force.

“Generally, the West no longer adhere to their own religion. They are Christians in name only. That is their right.

“But they must not show disrespect for the values of others, for the religion of others. It is a measure of the level of their civilisation to show this respect, ” he wrote.

France’s Junior Digital Affairs Minister Cédric O said he had spoken to the country head of Twitter to immediately suspend Dr Mahathir’s official account.

“If not, Twitter would be an accomplice to murder, ” he tweeted.